Kean Doway excels in spelling competition |05 April 2023
A delighted Kean Doway, winner of this year’s spelling bee competition, holds aloft his trophy
Kean Doway from Mont Fleuri Primary 6 is the grand winner of the third national spelling bee competition 2023, under the theme ‘Be bees of the spelling bee’.
The competition was organised by the Seychelles Centennial Women Lions Club (SCWLC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
Expressing himself at the end of the competition, Kean said he was very happy and surprised as he had not expected to win.
“I enjoyed myself because the spelling competition was friendly but also competitive and it was a lot of fun. It was not too difficult but it was quite nerve wracking,” he said.
There were 27 schools participating in the competition, with 2 students each, making a total of 54 contestants.
The spelling consisted of three rounds, where in the final round there were four finalists. Brendon Morel from Beau vallon primary school was the 3rd runner up, Roland Chiemela Dimgba from Au cap primary was the 2nd runner up and 1st runner up was Shania Monthy from Cascade primary.
The SCWLC said it wanted to organise a national event to develop the knowledge of literacy among the young leaders of primary 5 and 6.
The President of the SCWLC, Annithaaraj Kannan, said that literacy is just one of the global courses of the International Lions Club, along with childhood cancer, vision, diabetic, environment and hunger.
“Since our inception we have covered all areas and completed 23 projects successfully, followed by this project of Spelling Bee done today, hence that would be completion of a total of 24 projects to date,” she said.
The director general of Allied Education Services, Cyril Pillay, said the aim of the competition for the Ministry of Education is to help children improve in their learning especially writing.
“I have noticed that these students have so much talent, and I want to congratulate them for having the courage to stand in front of a crowd and spell a word under pressure, with some words being quite difficult, it was very admirable,” he said.
The first national spelling bee competition was held in 2018, with the second one the following year which were won by Chloe Antat of Anse Boileau school and Anand Narayan from Mont Fleuri primary respectively.
Diane Larame
Photos by Joena Meme
